


Anna

by middlemarch



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies), Frozen 2 - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Box Wine, Christmas, Christmas Lights, Christmas Party, Drinking, F/M, Gift Fic, Humor, Kristoff is a vet student, Light Angst, Living on a Budget, Moving In Together, Neighbors, Philadelphia, Romance, Song Lyrics, hair products galore, studio apartments, the one where Kristoff calls Anna "babe"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:09:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21992725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: "Has ANYONE adapted The Menzinger’s “Anna” into an AU modern fic about Anna and Kristoff?  Because if they have, I need to read it yesterday.  Anyone know?"Anyone here, waving her hand around frantically, Hermione Granger-in-Snape's-Potions-Class-style.
Relationships: Anna & Elsa (Disney), Anna/Kristoff (Disney), Kristoff & Sven (Disney: Frozen)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheSpasticFantastic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpasticFantastic/gifts).



“I know it’s box wine but it’s good. Well, it’s actually really good if you consider how cheap it is and there was a 2-for-1 special, so you should try it, you really should, Kristoff,” Anna said, so emphatic the red wine she’d poured into a freebie plastic cup from a random ball game (Phillies? Who knew?) nearly sloshed out and over his hand. Her two braids swung wildly under the blue paisley bandana she’d tied over her head like the cutest babushka in the world, ostensibly to keep her clean during their move-in. She had smudges on her cheek from scrubbing the windows and the knees of her denim overalls had turned black, but at least her hair hadn’t gotten dusty. For a small studio apartment, it had a truly impressive amount of dirt—the windows had been filthy, the oven was streaked with grease, and the fridge had nearly made him faint—and he was going to vet school, no stranger to strange manure. They’d done their best and it was looking much less disgusting but they’d earned a round of drinks and it seemed like what they had was box wine. He took the plastic cup and gently tapped her smiley-face mug, then took a gulp. It wasn’t bad and the second swallow was pretty nice.

“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to work so hard to convince me. I’m not your fancy-pants sister, I don’t need a vintage and a bouquet,” Kristoff said. He drank again, more like a polite adult human being and less like a parched animal at a trough. Was it rich and oaky? It didn’t taste like cardboard and it wasn’t too sweet or too vinegary. “It’ll go good with the pizza—meat lovers and veggie. And yeah, I got extra peppers, no mushroom for you.”

“Two pizzas? Just for us?” Anna asked. Kristoff’s friend Sven had loaned them his pick-up, but he hadn’t had time to help load it or bring the furniture and boxes up the three flights. Kristoff figured paying for the gas and the first round of beers the next time they got together would be an adequate thank-you.

“We didn’t hire movers and the leftovers will be breakfast. And we have to celebrate—moving in to our first place, _surviving_ moving in and that couch of yours—is it made of lead under all that corduroy? Anyway, we can get back to your budget tomorrow,” Kristoff said.

“You make a fair point,” Anna said. She was maybe a little tipsy, definitely flushed, and she needed a few slices in her before she had anymore box wine. She twirled around as if she were wearing a ballgown and laughed delightedly. “I can’t believe it’s all ours! I feel like a queen in a palace!”

Kristoff was about to say _Babe, look around_ or _Cool your jets_ because the studio apartment was just this side of a dump and he was going to be squeezing his over 6 foot frame in a double bed because that’s all that would fit in the so-called “sleeping alcove” and trying to cook a double batch of chili on a two burner stove, but Anna was so excited and happy and it was their first place, just theirs, within their measly budget with enough left-over for 2 pizzas and box wine. Anna’s sister Elsa might turn up her nose at it, accustomed to the gingerbready Victorian out in the country she and Anna had inherited from their parents, but he and Anna wanted to be together, in the city, close to his vet program and her new job at the newspaper and they’d pulled it off.

“A dancing queen?” he asked, tapping his phone. ABBA filled the air and Anna’s bright smile got sweeter as she started to shimmy. Kristoff leaned back against the small Formica countertop and watched, memorizing the moment. Memorizing Anna.


	2. Chapter 2

“Did you buy all the Christmas lights in Philly? Anna? Can you hear me?” Kristoff said from the doorway. The apartment was ablaze with light from the miles and miles of blinking white and multi-colored light strings, draped on every surface, around every window, obliterating the mantle of the fireplace Anna had fallen in love with when they’d first seen the place. They’d given up a lot for that mantle and now you could barely see it. He felt his retinas beginning to sizzle around the edges.

“Can I hear you? How is that your question?” Anna called out. She must have started decorating the moment she walked in the door because she was still in her sensible black work pants and button-down shirt and the little pearl studs he’d gotten her for her birthday but her work shoes were kicked off and she’d taken her hair down from its bun. It was everywhere, somehow not tangled in the lights that painted her face with their soft colors. 

“I don’t know. It’s just—what the hell’s going on? Isn’t your sister coming over with Maren in like a half-hour? Sven actually RSVPed and my lab partner Olaf said he’s coming and Mattie and Halima from across the hall, we have to get the lasagnas in the oven and you were going to make the salad and it’s, pardon my French, fucking mayhem in here?” Kristoff said. It was hard to be really exasperated with Anna because he loved her and she was adorable and like the dictionary definition of enthusiasm, but she was trying his patience, a little, which was something that rarely happened.

“No one wants salad, Kristoff. So cross that off your list. No one’s going to eat it, not even if you make the green goddess dressing and Elsa said she was bringing dessert and Maren’s bringing that ice-wine so chill. And maybe help a sister out over here?” Anna said. He walked over and started untangling the nearest string, the one wrapped around her left wrist. Did he quickly duck his head down to nuzzle the side of her neck? Well, was she complaining?

“You’re not my sister,” he muttered. She sighed, a sinking-into-a-bathtub-full-of-bubbles sigh, the same one he’d heard when he started at the small of her back and worked his way up to her nape, hands first and then lips.

“Damn straight,” Anna said. 

Somehow, they got her out of the mess of lights, the 70% off from the big-box store lights and the fat, primary color, scored-from-a-flea-market and the left-on-the-curb-in-a-box-for-a-reason winky lights, all before her sister and her sister’s _it’s complicated_ and his friend and their neighbors arrived. And he knew it was something he’d remember for a long time, the kind of memory that would take over and confuse him, so he’d call out her name _Anna Anna_ and then remember in the silence she was away on assignment and he was alone. The place, always too small, would be too big without her. It wasn’t the same without her.


	3. Chapter 3

“I’ll be fine on my own,” Kristoff said. Not to her face, not even on Facetime, but into his actual phone, once step up from a freaking telegram or Morse code.

“Really?” Anna said. She was worried and excited and probably twirling that long curl that fell over her shoulder nervously. She was three hours ahead and thousands of miles away and her nightgown was still under her pillow. And he wasn’t going to tell her, but he was probably going to fish the nightgown out and hold it, smell it, to get her scent in his face, roses and lemon and Joy by Patou on special occasions but somehow always on her nightgown. She had been away for four days and she was calling to say she needed to stay longer. He had two exams on Friday and a practicum and Professor Bulda said he had a real feel for large animals and she wanted him to consider an opportunity in Tennessee and he wasn’t going to tell Anna any of that either.

“Yeah, babe. Don’t worry. Do your thing. My love, it’s not fragile,” he said, not quite sure about the word _fragile_ , thinking of her wrists in his hands and how his heart felt when she’d boarded her economy flight, her cheap neck pillow like a queen’s ruff.

“I don’t know,” she said softly. Oh, that soft voice, the one he knew from the middle of the night, when they both woke up and were sleepy and she felt so good he was kissing her before he actually realized it wasn’t a dream and he broke away, afraid he was crossing a line, and then she grabbed him, grabbed with her slender hands and the leg she threw over his hip, and said so softly _Don’t stop, fuck, Kristoff, make my dreams come true_. It would have been torture except she didn’t want him to wait and she was sweet, so sweet and warm.

“You do know. It’s okay, take as long as you need to take,” Kristoff said, willing the words to be true. To convince both of them. “I mean, the place’s not the same without you. But I can move in the shower without knocking down one of your bottles of hair-goop. My big toe is still recovering from when your silkenizer-curl-frenzy thing fell on it.”

Anna made a sound like a laugh, like a choking little laugh that had tears right behind it, “I think your toe did more damage to that bottle than the other way around. It was like a 2 ounce sample bottle.”

“We can argue about it when you get home,” he said. There was a pause and it stretched out, not like Anna on a Saturday morning, her arms raised over her head, his ratty adopted tee-shirt falling off one white shoulder entirely. It was not a good kind of pause, it was uneasy and beginning to be dreadful, that yellow-grey moment before a tornado. “You’re coming home, right? Everyone’s asking for you.”

“Of course, I’m coming home,” she said.

“Sometimes,” he began, “sometimes it feels like this is just a place for you to keep your stuff.”

“Oh, Kristoff. It’s not. It’s home,” she said, very quickly, so quickly he knew she meant it, that she couldn’t wait to tell him the truth. “You’re home. You. I couldn’t do this here if I didn’t know you were there, waiting for me to come home to you, waiting to tell me everything.”

“Okay,” he said. “I just…I just miss you. I can wait, because I love you but I miss you.”

“Maybe we have to lean in to the missing,” Anna said thoughtfully. He could see her thinking face, how she scrunched up her little nose and her blue eyes became bluer, her sweet red mouth pursed. He’d learned not to kiss her just then.

“Lean in? Like that book?”

“Yes, I mean, no, not like that book, that’s highly problematic and don’t get me started on social media…I mean, like, we could try and feel the missing as part of the love. Like, that’s a way I love you now, by missing you, and vice versa and I don’t know, Kristoff, this sucks,” Anna said.

“Yeah, it does. But it’s not forever. And that’s how I love you, so maybe we should just buck up,” he said. She laughed again. He started thinking about asking Maren about her parents’ cabin in the mountains, for when Anna came home. About his grandmother’s sapphire ring, shoved way behind his long underwear, about some box wine and a veggie pizza and practicing with his right knee, since the left one was still messed up from high school football.

“I love you forever too,” Anna said. “And I’ll be home soon, lean in to that, Mr. Buck-Up McBuckyface. Or doctor, Dr. McBuckyface, I’m not forgetting vet school and you never told me about what Professor Bulda said and don’t think I forgot that.” 

“Oh, Anna.”

**Author's Note:**

> This just proves you should always ask the void if someone has written the fic you want to read because maybe they have and maybe they haven't yet but are dawdling on the next chapter of their novel and this would be a welcome respite.
> 
> Title is (of course) from the song "Anna" by The Menzingers. https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/menzingers/anna.html


End file.
